"Syria is the dominant player in Lebanon and is responsible for a quick resolution to this issue," he said. "We reserve the right to respond at the time, place and means we find appropriate."

Mr. Barak may be right in his assessment. More than 35,000 Syrian troops have manned the northern half of Lebanon since 1976, and Syrian-backed Lebanese nationalist militias spearheaded the attacks that forced the last of Israel's troops to leave Lebanon in May. Such involvement would seem to indicate Syria is more or less in charge of Lebanon, whose land borders are mostly with Syria and whose population is just three million to Syria's 17 million.

But that's not the whole story. Before his father, Hafez al-Assad, died in June, Bashar al-Assad, now president, initiated some changes in Lebanese policy. In 1998, Syria started dealing with Lebanon through pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, rather than through individual politicians. This year, Syria stood by as politicians it didn't favor succeeded in national elections.

Hezbollah is no longer completely dependent on its old backers in Syria and Iran, many here say. Israel and Hezbollah have opened communication channels separate from Syria, a United Nations official says. And, if Israel and Hezbollah can come to a peaceful resolution of this latest incident, tensions between Israel and Lebanon might finally be put to rest, leaving Syria out in the cold.

The kidnappers are demanding that Israel release more than 15 Hezbollah prisoners in exchange for the three soldiers; several observers expect Israel to compromise.

"It's finished. Hezbollah has got what they wanted," says Timur Goksel, senior political adviser to the 5,700-man U.N. force that has watched the Israeli-Lebanese border for more than two decades. "There's no Hezbollah left on the border anymore. I think we may be on our way to being out of a job."

That depends partly on the final outcome of the recent Israeli-Palestinian violence. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan shuttled between meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials Tuesday, trying to establish a truce and help negotiate the release of the Israeli soldiers. His mission was bolstered by Israel's decision to extend for another 48 hours its ultimatum -- initially set to expire Monday evening -- to the Palestinians to end hostilities.

Mr. Barak also said he would consider attending a U.S.-led peace summit. But Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Mousa said Tuesday that a U.S.-led summit was unlikely, that the peace process was at "an impasse" and that Arab leaders would meet alone at a summit in Cairo on Oct. 21-22.

Hostilities continued Tuesday, particularly between Jewish settlers and Palestinians, though at a level less intense than in previous days. The overall death toll reached more than 90 -- mostly Palestinians and Israeli-Arabs -- and thousands have been wounded.

If some kind of peace is re-established, however, the debate in Lebanon will turn back to Syria's influence in the region, especially given the presence of hundreds of thousands of illegal Syrian workers in the country.

"We've been asking for Syrians to withdraw for 10 years," says Ziad Abs of the Lebanese Patriotic Current, a mainly Christian group that favors the withdrawal of Syrian troops. "We never asked the Syrians to be our enemies. But they should understand that if they feed the situation like this it will burst."

The profile of Syrian soldiers in Lebanon has quietly dropped in recent months. But Michael Young, of the Lebanon Center for Policy Studies in Beirut, says that Syria doesn't want to pull out its troops yet. "There is some uncertainty in Damascus on how to deal with Lebanon," he says.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese army, though largely untested, is quite visible these days. Some Lebanese policemen were watching the Israeli-Lebanese border Tuesday. But they stood at a distance of 100 yards, not intervening as a group of Palestinian refugees braved a minefield to hurl stones over the border fence toward an armored Israeli patrol. Diplomats say Syria is still preventing proper deployment of the Lebanese army, because it prefers to leave the situation insecure to put pressure on Israel and absolve itself from responsibility for any cross-border attacks.

Flashpoints along the border in recent days include a piece of metal fence that runs over the top of the centuries-old hilltop tomb of a 16th-century holy man. The division was made because nobody could agree on whether he was an Arab or a Jew.

On one side Tuesday, Israeli soldiers stood defensively behind a wire fence. On the other, Lebanese and Palestinian youths came to taunt them, spit at them and shake sticks and flags at them. The force keeping them apart was a contingent of U.N. troops from the West African state of Ghana, whose officer's mandate to intervene went little further than a murmur of "good, good" as he persuaded some of the boys to drop their stones.

The Israeli reaction alternated between nonchalant smiles and the cocking and aiming of rifles at the youths a few feet away. But that only encouraged one of the Lebanese men. He immediately dropped to his knees, opened his jacket and pointed at his heart to show where the Israeli should shoot.